Responses should be a minimum of 250 words and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.
Forum posts are graded on timeliness, relevance, knowledge of the weekly readings, and the quality of original ideas. While proper APA is not required, attribution to sources that informed your posting should be included. Refer to the grading rubric for additional details concerning grading criteria.
Respond to Troy:
Of all the weeks so far this is one that I enjoyed. Through other classes I have had in the past I have had to look at qualitative and quantitative research methods. So, going through the reading and the lessons I at least felt I was able to comprehend the material well the first time through it. Qualitative research is not the study of numbers, it is essentially the study of the individuals or the individuals experiences based around the research topic that the researcher has hypothesized. At least this is how I distinguish qualitative from quantitative research.
One of the first assumptions in qualitative research according to (Krefting, 1991), is that behavior is influenced by the physical, sociocultural, and physiological environment. This assumption is the basis for a naturalistic inquiry. This means that when conducting interviews or focus groups if you are addressing a specific job such as police officers you as the researchers are likely to get similar responses because you are dealing with individuals who have been socialized the same way. Another example of this is whether or not you refer to soda as pop, or soda. It all depends on where you grow up and are socialized in what to call the specific drink.
The seconded assumption according to the article I looked at was that behavior goes beyond what is observed by the investigator (Krefting, 1991). One of the first things that came to mind with regards to this is a look at use of force with in police forces. All police officers are taught the use of force continuum. So, if they are all taught how to respond to a situation in the same manner why do we have so many issues with use of force. Any officer can tell you what is the correct use of force but whether they actually apply it in the field is the behavior talked about in the assumption.
My one main question is how do you choose between an interview driven research or a focus group. I think an interview process with specific pre determined questions will help you stay on topic and allow the researcher to gather the information necessary. But, how do you keep bias out of the questions prepared and how would keep from leading the person being interviewed . As for focus groups how would the researcher stay on track with multiple people. Granted a focus group may reveal more than a basic interview question because we all have scene that when you get a group of people together who are involved with the same thing they start to open up more in a group because they have something in common with the other members. I feel that staying on topic is the biggest issue along with keeping personnel bias out of it.
I think you get more out of qualitative research because of real life experiences being shared in interviews or focus groups. Which is much more insightful in my opinion than numbers on a spread shit.
Reference:
Krefting, L. (1991). Rigor in qualitative research: The assessment of trustworthiness. The American journal of occupational therapy, 45(3), 214-222.